


Femslash Meta

by Franzeska



Series: March Meta Matters [15]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 5,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23160568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzeska/pseuds/Franzeska
Summary: A variety of femslash-related meta imported from Tumblr
Series: March Meta Matters [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664836
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	1. It’s out there... If you actually want it

**Author's Note:**

> Uploaded for day 15 of the March Meta Matters Challenge.
> 
> When you're a queer woman, you get constantly badgered to care about femslash, and by that I mean f/f _fanfic_ specifically. It doesn't matter how much you like f/f media or whether you reblog f/f fan art or edit yuri AMVs: only the holy grail of increasing the percentage of f/f fanfic matters in a certain kind of wank.
> 
> At the same time, there's 10x the meta about "I'm a bi girl, but I only read m/m" than about femslash itself. The frustration is understandable.
> 
> Below is a collection of various posts relating to my queerness, the kinds of f/f media that draw me, and--yes--more of ye olde "why I prefer m/m as a queer woman" discourse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: October 23, 2015.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/131739728099/lookninjas-id-like-to-say-that-i-had-to-go
> 
> A discussion had sprung up about women writing m/m. As usual, it was sparked by someone making offensive and hurtful generalizations in one direction and then people making equally stupid generalizations in the other. The real instigating post seems to have been the passage below, quoted here in its entirety because it is the platonic form of every stupid-ass "Why slash" argument and would be a genius piece of trolling if the poster had meant it that way, though I'm sure they were entirely in earnest.
>
>> "Whenever I see critique like this, I wish people talk more about why women are writing m/m slash, why the genre is mostly read and written by women. What does it mean for a woman or girl to explore her sexuality through the queerness of men? How does a woman or girl explore queerness through slash fics, rather than femslash, when the queer experiences of men and women are so different? Most of the women writers or readers of m/m slash fics are straight women using the slash relationship to make the male characters as they want them to be. It’s giving straight women agency in a patriarchal system, but often at the expense of genuine queer experience because male queerness becomes a tool for women to subvert patriarchy while continuing to promote erasure of women and female queerness."
> 
> The person being nagged about this responded how we slash fangirls always respond: by defending her own queerness and pointing out the transgressive nature of slash. I sympathize and have made many of the same arguments. However, as the years have passed, I have come to sympathize more with the other side of this argument, at least in the sense that m/m slash is _not_ really all that transgressive in this day and age.
> 
> The discussion can be seen here:
> 
> https://bookshop.tumblr.com/post/131554961158
> 
> lookninjas made a separate post skewering a couple of the talking points. She commented that a certain kind of cis gay guy media is the highest profile and most common out of queer representation, but at the same time, lots of queer women have been steadily making queer media for decades. (She posted two lists, one of m/m and one of f/f media, which is what I refer to in my response below.)
> 
> The post boils down to "It's out there if you are _actually looking for it_" combined with "Your excuse about slash being the most transgressive and/or only option doesn't hold water." I think there are some legit arguments about what m/m can give me in fic that f/f can't (or often doesn't, anyway), but I agreed that this particular round of the argument was full of bad arguments based on a lack of interest in _trying_ f/f media.

Word. When I was coming out in 1995 or so (assisted by some helpful bisexual who’d commented the year before in alt.tv.x-files that they got twice the enjoyment out of the show, which made 13-year-old me go “Huh…”), I bought a ton of compilations of Dykes to Watch Out For at the bookstore, along with all of the other lesbian comics and queer history books and whatnot. (I grew up in Oakland, CA. There was a lot of shit in the local bookstores. Like, separate queer lit and queer history sections at Barnes & Noble-level “a lot”.) Hilariously, it looks like I’ve actually read/seen more of list #1 than list #2, which is a surprise, I must say. (I agree with the general point about their fame though.) All of that f/f media I was consuming was very helpful to me as I was figuring out who I was and coming out–when I was 14.

It is now 20 years later, and I am no longer in need of help figuring out who I am. It turns out I like to read a lot of slash and even more m/m/f fanfic. Big whoop. I could go into a lot of boring detail about why I think I like what I like, but the bottom line is that there is _plenty_ of f/f media (and plenty of f/f fanfic) waiting out there for me should I want it. I was even a big Xena fan during its first season and in a bunch of anime fandoms while everyone else was having babby’s first yuri ship over in Sailor Moon, but my interests lay elsewhere. I mean, not that 14-year-old me didn’t totally want to be and/or fuck Gabrielle and steal her terrible season 1 outfit that I loved, but I didn’t actually care about Xena/Gabrielle fanfic.

Nowadays, though, there’s this persistent blindness in slash fandom to the f/f media and fandoms that exist. It’s ridiculous: either seek this stuff out (and it is easier to find than it’s ever been) or relax and go on hanging out in dudeslash fandom where you are happy. Why must we rehash this argument every year of every decade forever? Are we really that embarrassed about our taste for dudeslash that we need to justify it by pretending there aren’t plenty of women who spend their time writing femslash or pro media about queer women? Are we jealous, insecure, or just unable to google?

Passion & Perfection may be where my id goes to die, but it’s there and has been there for a billion internet years. (Enough internet years that I have seen the many complaints from femslashers who also feel it’s where their ids go to die.) I don’t know where the action is nowadays (POI? a bunch of magical girl fandoms? Clexa? Homestuck?), but it won’t be hard to find for anyone who is genuinely interested. The dudeslash bubble I exist in is regularly invaded by The 100 gifs and After Ellen links about that damned Spanish thing with the costumes and the boobs. (Actually, that looked kind of tempting. But stop pimping me the Spanish CSI thing where one of them dies at their wedding. Booooo.)

As a small fandom person, I just don’t believe that people can’t find their little corner of fandom, whether it’s femslash or anything else, unless the real problem is that they can only ship things that have 10,000+ fics and a dedicated convention. (In which case, go to Faberry con. Sheesh.)

It’s out there. If you actually want it, you will find it or you will found it. It’s that simple.

Tagged: #cranky #meta #fandom history #the little red hen is my fandom role model


	2. Self inserting into male characters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: September 18, 2017.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/165496120589/a-comprehensive-guide-to-mlm-shipping-habits-in
> 
> Some anon had a shockingly new and different take on m/m shipping:
> 
> "Ok, this is going to be a controversial one, but her me out: do you think it’s a bit weird that so many women in the fandom (most of them straight or bi) only show interest in mlm ships? I know on a personal level everybody has their reasons and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with liking mlm in any sense, but for so many women to only relate to relationships where they aren’t represented is a bit… weird. Not to mention knee-jerk reactions to any mlf pairing 🤔"
> 
> freedom-of-fanfic's response, thankfully, started with exactly what I was thinking:
> 
> "This is far from a controversial question. People have been mystified that transformative fandom - primarily made up of women* - is ‘only’ interested in mlm for as long as transformative fandom has been a recognized phenomenon."
> 
> They referenced my meta post _Fandom is NOT mostly slash_ (hey... I should back that up next...), so naturally, I had to weigh in.
> 
> This post isn't primarily about f/f, but it does articulate an important point that comes up again and again: Many of us do not fantasize about _ourselves_. Many of us do not fantasize in a way that is relevant to direct, literal representation. We may or may not like f/f and we may or may not like fucking women in real life, but some of the naggier arguments about how we should spend more time on f/f fanfic assume that our fantasy lives operate in a way that they just _do not_.

I second the footnote [that non-woman people in fic fandom are mostly AFAB]. That’s my experience, but I can’t back it up with reliable statistics.

I was just at KiScon (a great Kirk/Spock con–you should all go to the next one, which is 2019 in Seattle). An academic presented the result of her recent survey. It was about the readership of explicit slash.

Some people are sick of answering “Why slash?” over and over and over, and I understand that feeling, but I always like analyzing why I like things, even when the question is not being asked in good faith. (And, no, I don’t think it’s being asked in good faith here, or at least not in a self-aware way.) I was thinking: “Gee, I wonder if I answered this lady’s survey. I answer so many surveys… I hope I knew about hers in time…” And then a quote that was obviously from me popped up in the presentation and I burst out laughing. I guess that answers that! Anyway…

The orientation breakdown of the survey was extremely predictable. I don’t remember precisely, but it was somewhere around the usual 40% straight women, 40% bi women, plus a mix of everybody else. What struck me was the taste breakdown: 

_Most of the respondents did not restrict themselves to m/m._

That surprised me a little, but it shouldn’t have. I like tons of m/f and m/m/f. The former is so common that there’s no identity terminology for it. The latter has no terminology at all, aside from the assumption that “OT3″ usually means this gender combo and not the other possible ones–much to the annoyance of f/f/m, f/f/f, and m/m/m fans. I often like f/f professional media, but I only occasionally like f/f fic, so I wouldn’t call myself a femslasher. It seems rude and presumptuous to claim that label when I have only a minor interest, queer identity or no queer identity. Hell, I’ve got a straight female friend who reads more f/f than I do. I call myself a “slasher” because I like lots of m/m fanfic, and there is enough hostility and boggling that this taste has a name and an identity associated with it.

There have always been and will always be women who think m/m is hot. There may not always be “slashers”.

Another thing that the survey turned up was how many cis women self-insert into male characters and picture themselves as male when masturbating to sexual fantasies or when writing fanfic. This was fascinating to me. I don’t think I do this when I’m reading or writing het, at least not on average. (Though maybe I should go back and look at my het ships. I tend not to psychoanalyze my taste in het nearly as much, so maybe this impression is inaccurate. And maybe this behavior is also why I prefer m/m/f to m/f or m/f/f. Huh… Food for thought.)

What I do know for sure is that, when it comes to m/m/f, one of the guys is always my fave, the one whose POV I like writing from most, the one I most identify with, and the one I self-insert into when writing or reading porn. (Well, to the degree that I self-insert at all.) It is never about me and a harem of men. It is always about me, my boyfriend, and my girlfriend. As a bisexual woman, this makes perfect sense to me, even though I am usually monogamous IRL and definitely cis.

That, in itself, is a whole long story. I questioned my gender when I was 14, and if it were today, I’d probably have twenty gender modifiers in my tumblr sidebar, but I like my body fine, so I eventually decided that I am just plain old cis but think that gender roles are stupid. Experiences don’t change that much over the decades, but what names we put to them and how we see ourselves does. So if you’re a teenager on tumblr, don’t assume that the Fandom Olds are all evil cishet oppressors. They might be a Kinsey 2 and think labels are dumb. Who we are and who we love is real. How we describe it depends on fashion.

Anyhow, it’s cool to know that so many other women in that survey have similar experiences to mine. I find it very strange that other people assume that I would want porn that “represents” me. I find it very strange when people predominantly have sexual fantasies that star themselves. I have always predominantly had sexual fantasies about people who are not me. It’s like that autochorissexual identity except not at all asexual. In fact, when I’ve had conversations about this with other fangirls, the majority have said their sexual fantasies are like that. It’s extremely strange to me when someone treats this as _not_ the nerd default.

To me, one of the most important distinctions in sexual identity and behavior is self insert fantasizers vs. voyeuristic fantasizers. We don’t have good terminology for this, but I remember trying to explain the idea to someone back in college in 2001 or so. This division has always been with us, and it explains so many of the wrong-headed sexuality surveys run by straight men about female subjects. (I’ve gotten in fights with sex researchers before about this exact topic.)

The original question assumes that most slashers have “knee jerk” reactions to het ships. This just isn’t borne out by experience. Yes, individual slash fans react this way. The majority do not.

I think the original questioner needs to have a look at their own assumptions before they can find a satisfactory answer to their questions. There are many complex and interesting dynamics at work here that should not be reduced to: “Waaaah, fetishization! Girls suck! Stay in your lane!” You may not have stated it outright, OP, but you know the implication was there.

One semi-off-topic note on f/f fanfic: Because it has always been less popular overall and has always clustered in a more selective group of fandoms where the canon provides good f/f fodder, it has often been in its own f/f-centric spaces. Oldschool femslash archives have not been imported to AO3 in the same way that oldschool slash ones have. I find the likes of Passion and Perfection a total snorefest, and I was never active in organized Xena fandom, despite having a lot of Gabrielle thirst at 14, but there are totally older fandoms and sites you can go explore if you’re interested in femslash fandom history. I vaguely remember that Pink Rabbit Consortium was popular at one point. IDK where Sailor Moon yuri fandom hung out. I just remember stuff like HAMAL. (Yes, I’ve always been attracted to wank.) Buffy fandom has had a lot of single-fandom archives. I assume the femslash was on some of them, and it may not have made it onto AO3. All of that stuff is worthy of study, preservation, discussion.

I get that it’s frustrating that a lot of acafans, meta writers, and amateur historians focus on slash or het (and, yes, they do often focus on het, despite tumblr’s gigantic hateboner for women who like m/m blinding it to this fact). Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where the people who are frustrated need to step up and do the work themselves.

When I do fandom historical research myself, I stick closer to my areas of expertise, but I’m always happy to offer my help to people interested in other areas of fandom history to whatever limited extent I can.


	3. Bisexual women: the fake queers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 6, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189518893144/ff-ship-anon-again-ask-character-limits-are-my
> 
> An ongoing conversation in FINR's tumblr generated the following ask:
> 
> Anonymous asked: f/f ship anon again: ask character limits are my bane, seriously. I definitely get why m/m shippers feel the need to defend themselves, I'm more trying to draw a parallel to the 'I ship dark things to cope' reason throwing those of us who just like it under the bus. As for the crushing part, I kind of feel like it's obvious that you write off all f/f content as being a certain way, that isn't encouraging anyone to come check our stuff out. 
> 
> There was more, but that was the gist of it

I mean… at least 50% of this is bi women freaking out at ourselves because we like vag yet constantly get told we’re not real enough queers, and we’re afraid our fiction tastes support that.

Consuming m/m fiction while eating pussy = massive identity crisis time

It’s a lot easier to say that all f/f sucks and no one likes it than to say that one personally doesn’t without suddenly having to defend the idea that you actually do like women, yadda yadda. It’s toxic and stupid, but I get where it comes from.


	4. Fuck this guilt trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 6, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189519033104/kyouh-meret118-threerings-theres-always
> 
> This was part of the ongoing conversations on three-rings post about "There’s always a lingering question that I ask myself, which is why do I, a cis bisexual woman, enjoy romance between two men so much?"
> 
> This was a very small side conversation, but it highlights a pattern I _loathe_ in the fujocourse and in "Why don't you like f/f more?" discourse. It's true that person 1 specifically mentioned het, but they were also talking about female bodies in general.
> 
> F/F and M/M are not automatically on an equal footing because gender exists in the world and has social implications. Yes, this leads to internalized sexism, but a better term in the context of this conversation would have been _'trauma'_. Person 3 is being an asshole.
> 
> "Yes, but have you considered that you are bad?" is a take that crops up in every sub-conversation of every discussion of these topics. People need to FUCKING STOP IT.

Person 1:

"But it’s much more difficult for me, and I think for many women, to relax and enjoy romantic and sexual stories when they involve female characters. We’ve been burned too many times by shitty depictions, by shallow role models, by abuse portrayed as romantic. We have developed a stress response, a trauma response to heterosexual romance. We are hyper-reactive to a wide variety of triggers in regards to it. But removing women from the equation makes stories safer for us. And maybe it shouldn’t? In an ideal world? But for many of us, that’s the truth."

Person 2:

The same is true for het women and m/m visual porn too.

Person 3:

Yes. But I think there’s also some internalized sexism. Otherwise there would be more f/f.

Me:

If m/m exists because it’s “equal” or whatever, then sure.

But if m/m exists because dealing with the expectations heaped upon women is _exhausting_, then no. F/F would just be twice as exhausting in that case.


	5. what media are you consuming though?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 6, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189519569714/xlostlenore-threerings-threerings
> 
> Another sub-conversation in the same post as last chapter.
> 
> (And, yes, I know what I've said about how I reacted to Xena as a teenager, but this is how I react to Xena as an adult.)
> 
> Some hapless poster commented: "I’ve been feeling guilty about not enjoying female ships very much, because I as a lesbian _should_, right? That’s the assumption anyway. I wish I too had a friend who is a gender studies professor so I could ask them about this."

I mean… what media are you consuming though?

I’m not generally attracted to skinny women. Muscles or curves are my thing. I do like earth mama looks and some high femme looks, but I’m not into the type of super feminine made up look that feels like it’s targeted at straight men. I also like butch looks of the kind that are literally never on TV. I like live action media with a decent budget, minimal tragedy, and no het rape. I like humor but I hate sitcoms. I like sff/horror/speculative fiction or crime fiction. I like genre cliches, but I hate the ones that are like “the nagging wife” or “the overbearing mom”. I like to ship leads who have a lot of interaction in canon.

So… like… even if I accept only a fraction of these very reasonable requirements being met, what’s left?

Xena: A++ would ship anything

Rizzoli & Isles: So good on paper, but everyone needs to gain 10lbs of muscle, and the stereotypical mom needed to go

MCU for the first trillion movies: Darcy was hot, I guess. I read some OOC porn about Natasha tying her to a bed.

Person of Interest: I wish I could find Amy Acker hot. I can’t.

Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet BBC adaptations: **YESSSSS. Everyone is hot. Every trope is problematic and awesome.**

If I had to pick my #1 ladyboner-killer, it’s Hollywood casting. #2 is… everything else about Hollywood plotlines and costuming and makeup and… everything.

If you feel guilty, then by all means, check out more f/f media, but don’t beat yourself up for not connecting with the meager crumbs mainstream TV and film are giving you.


	6. a fujocourse interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 6, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189519809909/lucastapastatheshamanramen-threerings
> 
> Oops. This one is the fujocourse, not femslash. This is what happens when I try to archive 5 years of meta in a few days. It's part of the conversations on this same post by three--rings.
> 
> Dipshits like this are why slash fangirls are all so hypersensitive though, so I guess that's relevant to bad takes about m/m being The Revolution and all f/f being inadequate for our needs because reasons.

> And it’s fine to enjoy m/m romance, but there is a God awful trend of cis het women pushing queer men out of these fandom spaces and that is not remotely okay.

How, dude, how? I see this assertion a lot, but I don’t see a whole lot of examples.

What I do see is slash and BL and m/m romance novel fandom not _catering_ to men. That’s because these spaces are like 95% women + nb people. Should the local quilting bee or knitting circle think of the men too?

What, on a very concrete and literal level, are women doing to push men out? If you have an actual answer, it’s something we can work to stop.


	7. Solidarity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 8, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189557695539/anneapocalypse-replied-to-your-post
> 
> anneapocalypse commented something sensible on the anon post from a couple of chapters back. My response is extremely brief, but it's something I've expanded on elsewhere. AO3 is designed to make it easy to find the non-default thing, especially now that we have exclude filters. F/F and M/M are _both_ the minority elsewhere. Solidarity is more useful than fighting.

> I just want to thank this anon for expressing a lot of frustrations I have felt for a long time, and which I find difficult to express without putting m/m shippers on the defensive. So often in these discussions it feels like f/f is either left out entirely or treated as something no one could possibly like sincerely. Or we’re caught in the crossfire and attacked from both sides. TBH what I’d really like to see is less of m/m and f/f presented oppositionally, and more of a sense of solidarity among people who are tired of having our preferences come under fire for a variety of reasons.

Good point.

It’s interesting (though perhaps not actually surprising) that there appears to be more f/f on AO3 proportionally than on FFN or Wattpad. The things that make an archive better for m/m also apply to f/f.


	8. drowned in male gaze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 8, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189560141144/on-why-queer-women-writes-mm-this-is-my-personal
> 
> The previous post got me this anon ask. Sad but a common problem for many of us.

> Anonymous asked: On why queer women writes m/m: This is my personal experience. But I feel I'm drowned in male gaze. If I write f/f, I feel there are men watching, peeping. And if I write f/f, I'll out myself as queer. Hell, even being a slash fangirl/fujoshi is putting my sexuality into suspicion. Not everyone is in a queer-accepting environment, sadly. I sadly still need to pretend to be straight. If someone sees I like m/m, I just gave excuse that I like men and I like men on double dose.

Men have poisoned certain kinds of f/f (and female characters in general) for me too.


	9. No, not at all

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 8, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189562114959/no-not-at-all
> 
> A dude had weighed in on the on-going discussion of women who like m/m commenting about why he liked f/f and thinking about how the two tastes are related. I hadn't responded directly, and he got nervous when he saw the previous chapter's post:
> 
> "I hope my talking about my preference for it didn’t get into uncomfortable territory."
> 
> Actually, I just hadn't had anything specific to say in response, but it inspired me to talk more about my feelings about f/f media. I _do_ like f/f media, just specific stuff and not always what gets fanfic. I'd recently had a private conversation with someone (lierdumoa, possibly?) about queer vs. straight femme looks. It stuck in my mind as I was thinking about which media just gave me the wrong vibe despite being canon f/f.
> 
> (No, I still have no excuse for Renegade.)

Nah. I try not to be a hypocrite, especially when complaining about other people’s hypocrisy. Heh.

It’s not the _fact_ that men like f/f that rubs me the wrong way at all. And no individual man’s taste is going to bug me whether it’s a taste I share or something I find laughably un-hot.

What happens is that there are certain types of female characters and certain physical/makeup/costuming looks that leave me cold. They’re some of the common ones for women in big media that are usually designed to please men as a group. But it’s inconsistent and not always logical. There are some very mainstream het or male gaze-y looks I love.

So, for example, the doctor love interest in Lost Girl is completely un-hot to me because her look says prime time het medical soap opera character to me. She’s canonically a lesbian, and she has an on-screen romance with the lead, which is the kind of thing I say I want more of, but she still isn’t what I’m looking for. Her personality reinforced this problem for me, but a big part of it was how she looked.

  


Neutral lipstick + “natural” hair that is the product of hot rollers + aggressively groomed eyebrows + bland, neutral tones in clothing + scrawny = NOPE

Meanwhile, there are some trash shows from the 90s where I love the male gazey looks. Everyone on Renegade was super hot to me, including the female lead.

Apparently, when the male gaze looks like bright red lipstick, big lips, and big T&A, my libido is just fine with it. It’s not like she doesn’t have repulsively tweezed eyebrows. IDK. Maybe I hit puberty when DSL were in fashion or something. (I mean, part of the issue is that I’m an ass woman, and you can’t have an ass without some muscles and more than 4% body fat. 90s trash liked a bit more muscle on its women even if they were all still driven to eating disorders just like now.)

Cleopatra 2525 was a show in which no one wore clothing that actually covered anything, and they all have elaborate makeup and hairdos, but their looks, including the femme-y ones, just don’t read very straight to me, so I find them all hot:

There’s canon f/f that I like. It looks like this:

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Yeah, yeah, costume drama, but it’s more than that: I already found most of these actresses super hot in other roles. They’re still pretty scrawny because they’re actresses, but they have interesting faces.

And it’s not like everything poisoned by men instantly turns me off because I still love Frida, even with what we now know about Weinstein traumatizing Salma Hayek by demanding a lesbian scene. She was literally puking and taking tranquilizers before filming it (not because it was a lesbian scene but because it was a power play in an ongoing saga of abuse), but none of that prevents me from enjoying the wonderful film she and director Julie Taymor made in spite of that shitbag.

  
  


If feelings were logical, this would probably be the most ruined of anything, but they aren’t and it isn’t. I think it’s the eyebrows. Rowr!

So when I say that men have poisoned certain kinds of f/f for me, what I mean is that something like a sex scene between two very femme women who don’t have a lot of queer markers other than the sex they’re having doesn’t tend to interest me and that “neutral” makeup looks from recent decades are an instant nope. Beige eyeshadow and nude lipstick and hair in perfect waves from hot rollers is what dumb men think women roll out of bed looking like. Blech!

It’s less about men liking f/f and more about certain fashions being the default male gaze in mass media.

They signal straight to me. They signal stifling male expectations to me. Whether or not that’s really fair in a given context.

If some lady looks gothy enough or whatever, it doesn’t bother me in the same way even though plenty of dudes like goth chicks. Like I said, it’s not really a rational response. I can explain the patterns after the fact, but they’re not going to be an accurate barometer of which looks are sexist or morally bad or something.

If men like f/f media, that’s often actually a good thing. It potentially means more paying customers to support artists who _make_ f/f media.

And, yes, if _enough_ men pay and they outnumber women who do, that means more media that isn’t quite the type of f/f I like. I think it’s directly analogous to queer men reading m/m romance novels: 90% of it is going to feel off, but somewhere in that sea of content will be some things I really like. Some of it I might even end up liking better than more authentic content depending on what mood I’m in. As a bi girl, I’m often pretty turned off by authentic engagement with what it means to have a lesbian identity. There’s nothing _wrong_ with it! But it’s probably not what I’m going to seek in a fiction book or a film.

So talk away, my dude.

ETA: Oh! And as a side note, while I think it’s perfectly fine for cis dudes to make f/f art anyway, we also shouldn’t discount how much allowing “outsiders” to make art without interrogation protects the still-closeted people. That’s true whether it’s m/m romance novels or f/f movies or anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it turns out a lot of Tumblr hasn't seen the things those photos come from. I would describe the response as... horny.
> 
> Yes, the lady in the men's clothing looking in the mirror is from Tipping the Velvet. You should watch it. It was hot.
> 
> That last image is, of course, from Bound. At the time, we were all very, very confused about how two straight men had made one of the only good lesbian movies of the 1990s...
> 
> Years later, you probably know them better as the Wachowski _sisters_, creators of Sense8.


	10. (Yes, you should read Lee Winter’s books)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 8, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189565304759/not-to-draw-out-the-ship-dynamic-discourse-any

> Anonymous asked: Not to draw out the ship dynamic discourse any longer but I notice a lot of people forget that what people ship and which ones are most popular are usually also specific to the fandom someone is in and not just all fandoms in general, across the board. An anime with a large cast that's mostly male characters is going to have more M/M ships and a period drama with lots of well-developed female characters is going to have lots of F/F. It's a very your mileage may vary situation.

This is me. It’s always Discourse Hour here.

Most Discourse is only interested in Who Won On AO3, so only ships with like 50k+ fics are in the equation.

Yeah, the amount of fic about women gets much higher for canons with central female characters. If the canon is mostly about women’s relationships with women and not a lone woman in a sea of men, then you get a big f/f contingent.

Part of the embattled feeling is these things:

  * Lots of f/f writers are doing their best to Be The Change, but their fandom isn’t one of the handful of popular f/f ones, and they feel ignored and alone.
  * Lots of people pontificating are only _in_ fandoms for the latest m/m juggernaut and have no idea what else is out there. They’re speaking as people who think it would be good to like f/f, not people who are actively seeking it out.
  * Lots of people complaining that there’s “no f/f” are pissed that like 90% of the recs they receive are for cartoons when they only watch live action.
  * Most people don’t want to go to a new fandom. They want the thing they already love to suddenly get popular with everyone else.

These discussions look the same over and over and over. The only new thing in this one (marginally) is people reminding me to get off my ass and read the rest of Lee Winter’s books.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 9, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189568700069/lampshadedevil-olderthannetfic
> 
> This was yet another offshoot of three-rings' post.

> “Popularity leads to popularity” is sort of on the same track as something that occurred to me when reading through one of the umpty-some-odd offshoots of this discussion. [...]
> 
> (I can’t say a whole lot about my own preferences as of late, the fandom that I’ve fallen face first into has been overwhelmed by piles and piles of Female!MainOC/M fic with the release of the latest bit of canon, which is so novel to me that it’s kind of delightful. But it has always had a fair lean towards that, which pretty much makes it Canon Georg and thus an outlier and shouldn’t be counted.)

Yup.

I read romance novels. There are a couple of things I wish they’d do more often or differently, like having more bi characters and fewer rigid gender roles. Mostly, I like them, both the m/m and the m/f varieties that are plentiful.

Originality and newness are not an asset in a romance novel.

So when you go to write an f/f one, even if you’re reusing really common cliches from m/f and m/m, it can feel a little bit more awkward. It’s not impossibly awkward. It’s not that big of a hurdle at all. (Well, at least not for me.) But when you combine even 1% hurdle with a vastly smaller audience–and in the case of pro work, vastly less potential for profit–you have to be pretty damn invested to keep going.

The more I read solid but tropey f/f work (i.e. not literary fiction with a strong and unique voice I won’t want to and can’t imitate), the more my plotbunnies come to me in f/f flavor. I still read much, much less of this than of equivalent m/f and m/m. Back when I read none, I basically never got f/f plotbunnies.

It’s a pretty simple equation.

Partly, f/f trends more to contemporary romance than I like. Partly, there’s less and it’s at a higher price point. Mostly, I was already satisfied with the content I was reading and finding f/f I like is significantly more effort. Now that I occasionally make that effort, I’ll probably keep on doing it. Like you say: habit.

(Is it on Wattpad? ;D)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No, it wasn't on Wattpad. It was a video game fandom. And it's not Canon Georg _at all_. (Se a previously uploaded meta for my response and some stats.)


	12. I've changed how I talk about this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 6, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189517026434/ff-ship-anon-again-ask-character-limits-are-my
> 
> This was a different response to the f/f ship anon in FINR's tumblr.
> 
> Oops. Out of date order. Oh well.

Yeah, I definitely changed how I talked about f/f after someone pointed out how much “Well, no one _actually_ likes that stuff” subtext there was in how I phrased things.

Not only is that _not true_, but it’s also _not helpful_ if you think it would be good for more people to get into it. “Look how much fun they’re having over there” is a lot more persuasive than “I suppose nothing can be done, le sigh”.

The issue with recs is that the amount of f/f content is sufficiently low that you sometimes–in fact, often–can’t get a rec for what you want. It’s not that this content doesn’t exist. It’s that if you don’t already spend a lot of time in f/f-centric spaces, the reccers you will find have not consumed widely enough to point you in the right direction.

My issue is that there are some common tropes in pro f/f that I strongly dislike, and I am only interested in fic for canons I consume or would consume. So I’ll probably get into Killing Eve eventually, but I don’t currently watch cartoons or sitcoms at all. OUAT sounds, on paper, like something I’d enjoy, but I tried it and hated it. “Go where the content is” applies more heavily to f/f because there’s less of it. This can be a problem.

I do like original f/f media. My problem there is that a lot of what I consume is indie romance novels. The m/m and m/f ones are on Kindle Unlimited or cost like $2.99. The f/f ones cost like $10.99. I like f/f. Just not 3x more. Recs would help with this, but I have yet to find reliable recs. That’s probably more of a me problem than anything else, but it’s a common one.

That said, I do not normally like contemporary romances, but oh my god, you guys, everyone needs to go read _Breaking Character_ by Lee Winter.

Closeted actresses on a medical drama who are being set up as catfighting rivals have to fake date to get roles on an indie film. Where they have a sex scene. The tv show fans ship them. Media shenanigans ensue. There is pining. _All of the tropes!_ Also, it makes fun of European art film directors.


	13. My nemesis, Doctor Boring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 6, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189515033959/lilithdemonoftheunderworld-olderthannetfic
> 
> On three-rings' post, someone made the following comment: "I think it also comes down to fandom a lot, the first fandoms I can think of where a big wlw ship is happening I hate both of them. Lost Girl the Doctor ( I even forgot her name) and Bo and this is even a Canon ship on the show but when put next to Dyson X Bo it felt so boring."
> 
> THEY ARE CORRECT!

Ah, Doctor Boring.

I’m too bi and too fandom-y to handle Lost Girl. Your adorable sidekick is RIGHT THERE! You have weird sex powers! HOW IS THAT NOT THE SHIP????!

How am I supposed to like the canon f/f when they cast the most attractive woman on the show as STRAIGHT STRAIGHT STRAIGHT STRAIGHT and brought in the type of bloodless whiner who’s a love interest in straight guy-targeted media?

Lauren (yes, fine, I do remember her actual name, but I had to look it up to be sure) not only has the dullest personality on the show, but she looks like a conventionally “hot” love interest in straight stuff. She is so not my type either physically or in how she’s costumed and made up. World of nope.

Kenzi, on the other hand, is exactly my type in every respect. Dyson too.

I did not make it far into Lost Girl.


	14. They're Not The Fucking Same!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: January 17, 2020.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/190316615109/i-just-have-a-question-about-fujoshi-as-a-term-is
> 
> An anon asked satans-tiddies about the term 'fujoshi'. I think they were actually in earnest. But... wow...
> 
> Satans-tiddies answered etymologically about how the term comes from a specific context and thus is not about all "gay content". (Fuck you, people who constantly use "gay" to mean "queer" as though my bi ass is gay-lite and not an equal and different kind of queer.)

> Anonymous asked: i just have a question about fujoshi as a term. is there any discernible reason it only describes being a fan of m/m content? i think a large part of the misunderstanding of the term (other than the fact it was literally started by ppl online recently) is that its a term only for m/m content, and not for all gay content (m/m AND f/f) i think because it IS certainly true that many cishet women do fetishize gay men and rarely gay women, many ppl wrongfully assume that the term in it's m/m exclusivity is inherently fetishy because mlm are the ones who are most often fetishized by women. [...]

As a queer person who did consume a lot of older queer media as I was coming out (i.e. from queer presses where that was the focus, not fandom stuff with creators who happen to be queer), it annoys the shit out of me when people expect m/m and f/f or gay men and lesbians or queer men and queer women to somehow be identical categories.

When we struggle for same-sex marriage, m/m and f/f are pretty much equivalent.

But they’re not even slightly similar when we struggle to decriminalize sex acts. The entire history of those being criminal in the first place is wildly different between f/f and m/m in many countries.

And that’s just sticking with mainstream, real world activism about a couple of the biggest human rights issues! Once we move into the realm of art, _of course they are not the same_.


End file.
